OK, I think my router has become too hackable. The reliability has hit the toilet, and I’ve had two messages from my ISP warning me that there has been odd traffic. The first time I got a warning message I think I was using BitTorrent at the time, but the second was yesterday at around lunchtime – when my computers were all off and I was at work.
So, list of demands requirements:
- Wired router with a few Ethernet ports
- 802.11g WiFi with at least WPA encryption (can’t do WPA2 on the handheld)
- Xbox Live compatible
- DHCP implementation that works
- DNS server address passthrough from DHCP server (i.e. I want to use my ISP’s DNS servers, not have the box do DNS for me)
- ADSL2+ compatible, for whenever that gets rolled out by Demon
- PPPoA since this is of course a UK requirement
- A firewall that can be completely switched off or is actually configurable intelligibly
- Not excessively burdened with blinkenlights
- Will be updated regularly with patches for whatever its OS is
That last point is critical. There are way too many routers out there that run Linux and aren’t patched. D-Link haven’t produced an update since last November and even that’s not officially official, you have to find it on the FTP site. The last official update is September 2006.
I don’t need 802.11n as a) it’s still a draft, b) none of my other equipment needs it, and c) 54Mbps is already sufficiently fast to access the Internet. I don’t do much copying between devices and I wouldn’t do it when they were running on battery anyway.
I’m half tempted to try building a Windows CE kernel for it myself.
